10/15/2007 @ 6:00PM

Factory

I got my pink slip last week. It wasn’t pink, but bright orange, and it didn’t say anything but to report to my supervisor at the end of the shift. Why do they make these things bright orange? Doesn’t bright orange paper cost extra money? Can anyone afford bright orange paper anymore?

Fact: A ream of orange-colored Brite-Lite paper cost $23.99 on sale at the local PaperMax before it closed its doors. That’s about $15 more than what it cost when I was a kid.

I never follow orders to begin with, so I went to see my shift supervisor immediately after finding the “pink slip” in my mailbox. Marc looks like a rat-faced weasel at the best of times, always trying to crawl into the nearest shadow, ingratiating himself to his superiors and walking around the factory with a small, I’m-hiding-something smirk on his face. Behind his back, he was known as O.G.–Original Gollum.

This morning he was at his worst. He failed to make eye contact with me when I came in, smiling idly into his coffee cup and reading a newspaper as if nothing was going on. As if I hadn’t surreptitiously scanned the other mailboxes, as if I hadn’t seen similar slips of orange paper in them.

Fact: There are over 550 million people living in the United States today. The unemployment rate, back when the government provided us with any kind of census bureau information, was at 38%. (I’m no economist, but I’d say that number has reached higher than 50% at this point.) That means 209 million people out of work, give or take a few gentlemen of leisure. That means if you go to the movies alone–if you could go to the movies at all anymore, let alone by yourself–and you have people on either side of you, and you have a job, those two people sneaked in.

I forced the issue, waving the paper in the space between his eyes and the newspaper. The newspaper was three months old. We don’t get newspapers anymore, let alone much of anything that lets us know about the word outside Lancer, Pa. He was reading an article about those 50 stockbrokers on Wall Street who took an oath of suicide and jumped thirty stories to their death over half a year ago, when the market imploded and the president announced a “temporary shutdown” of the NYSE.

“Can I help you, Cole?” he asked in his prissy little voice. He did not look up.

“What does this mean?” I asked. Snarled.

“What does what mean?”

I shook the paper again. He looked up at me now. His eyes were tired, absent of the malicious spark that usually lit them from within. I wanted to feel bad for him, but considering the circumstances, my sense of empathy was at an all-time low.

“It means report to me at the end of your shift.”

Someone knocked on the door. We both looked up. Three other people were standing there, all of them with bright orange papers gripped in their fists.

Marc raised his voice. “Report to me at the end of your shift. No further details are forthcoming until the end of the shift.”

From outside, I could hear the mills and machines churning out our product, the sound of metal parts clattering back and forth and the soft susurrus of toilet paper being wrapped around rolls of cardboard. It’s not a glamorous job, but someone has to do it.

In fact, it was one of the few things I took for granted, until now. Despite the country’s recent economic woes, everyone still had to wipe their asses. I assumed we’d be in business, along with the coffin-makers and ditch-diggers, until this current bit of bad business was past.

Fact: During the First Great Depression, in the 1930s, the only businesses to make any money at all were funeral homes. (I read this somewhere, and I somehow doubt its veracity. If you can’t afford to feed your family, how can you afford a wake, a funeral and a cemetery plot?)

I turned back to Marc. “And suppose I don’t feel like doing anything during my shift, Marc? You know exactly what this piece of paper means ”

“If you don’t do any work during your shift, you’ll be fired for dereliction of duty.”

“ and don’t try to pretend you don’t!”

Someone, I think my friend Alan, put his hand on my shoulder.

Marc’s shoulders slumped. “Look. Just act like it’s a normal day, OK? You’ll find out everything you need to know at the end of the shift.”

I glared at the impudent little jerk, but held my temper in check. As I left the room, I balled up the piece of paper and left it lying on the floor of Marc’s office. Petulant? Yeah. Pissed? Hell yeah.

We gathered at lunch outside the factory, where a small contingent of workers had an open grill running. I waited for my hot dogs with Alan, a sub-foreman named Duncan, and two other gentlemen whose names I didn’t remember.

“What are we going to do?” Duncan was lamenting. “We all got the slip.”

“I say we strike!” someone yelled. Nobody laughed.

Alan, ever the voice of reason, said, “Look, you don’t know what those pieces of paper mean. Maybe, I dunno, maybe–”

“Maybe it means we’re invited to a surprise birthday party for Marc,” one of the two gentlemen said, and this, at last, elicited a round of chuckles from the small group that was gathering.

“Exactly,” Alan said, pleased that someone had proved his point, however farcically. “It could just be some intern’s poor idea of a meeting invitation. Maybe they want us to do another round of spot-checking for flaws, or there’s going to be a surprise inspection.”

I didn’t feel good about this; I didn’t share Alan’s rosy outlook on the future. I had a 3-year-old at home with a bad case of chronic asthma; he needed constant care, which meant a second income from my wife, Jula, was out of the question.

Our conversation was interrupted, not by an outburst of noise, but by the sudden lack of it. There was a grinding as the machines inside coughed and began to rattle down, and the lights inside the factory, which I could see through the open loading bay door, flickered once, twice, three times. The ancient air-conditioning unit above us, the one hanging out of Marc’s office’s window, sputtered a death rattle and quit its humming.

“Another brownout,” someone muttered.

Fact: In an attempt to conserve power, with electric plants running on skeleton crews throughout the United States, the Department of Energy has instituted a “rolling brownout” policy that knocks out power to various grids at various times. The lights stay on, but that’s about it. These brownouts are supposed to occur once every thirty to forty weeks in any given area. This was the third this week. At first, they announced the brownout schedule on the news. Then, when most people couldn’t afford cable anymore, it came in the mail. I haven’t seen one in my mailbox–or anything in my mailbox–for weeks.

Do you know how long it takes to power up these machines? The plant runs on a 24-hour schedule, and the machines are allowed a three-hour period in the early morning hours to cool down, get cleaned out and examined for defects. It takes over an hour to shut them down (you have to get the paper out of them, make sure all of the fiber runs have been completed, tighten off the cotton flow and shut everything down so the machines don’t cool improperly) and approximately 90 minutes to get them going at full capacity again.

A brownout kills the machines in less than 45 seconds. That means that half of the runs being done have to be restarted. When power is pulled from the machines at such a sudden rate, the metal plates cool off too slowly, and it can light the toilet paper stock on fire. We’ve had more than a few conflagrations from these accursed brownouts.

Fact: The brownouts were introduced as a “temporary measure.” The shutdown of the NYSE was a “temporarily measure.” When income tax was introduced in World War II, it was sold to the American public as a “temporary measure.” It’s 2027 now–I’m still paying a sizable chunk of my weekly check to Uncle Sam. You do the math.

So now we have to wait for the brownout to be over, then wait an additional 90 minutes to “boot up” the machines. Grrrrreat.

Someone bumped my shoulder. It was Collins. Collins was an abnormally tall, skinny man with a huge Adam’s apple–I think he had Marfan syndrome–and we all steered clear of him. Collins was fond of getting into fights with people on a regular basis, especially when we went out for drinks after getting our pay on Fridays. When we used to go out for drinks, that is. All of the bars nearby have closed.

I looked up, but he was just reaching for the potato salad. He bore a dark, thoughtful look on his face, as if he were carefully contemplating some matter of great portent. I avoided him, wandering off into the cooler confines of the shade under an awning to eat my hot dogs.

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it,” Marc said, fidgeting. Thirty-three of us–everyone on shift–stood in his office, stomachs cramping, as he laid down the law.

“You’re all laid off, as of next Friday.” Marc cleared his throat, looked at his hands as if some answer were there.

“Why us?” was the first question that went up. Several others murmured their assent at this pointed inquiry.

“The lay-offs are across the board. The plant is closing.”

Silence greeted this last. Marc licked his lower lip. His eyes shifted back and forth, from us to the door. We blocked the exit.

“Listen. I’m not happy about this, either. I don’t have a job waiting for me, either.”

“Yeah, but I’ll bet you get some kind of golden parachute,” said a big black man named Orleans. I looked across the room. Collins stood there, a dark storm cloud brewing on his brow. He bears watching, I thought.

“What I get is immaterial. If you–”

“The whole town lives and dies off of this plant,” Alan said quietly. “Why wasn’t there any warning?”

“I’m supposed to share the intimate inner workings of this company to everyone on shift, Alan?” Marc’s eyes blazed. “Maybe a third of you could understand a profit-and-loss statement.

“The company did everything it could. But in the end, there’s just not enough … never mind.”

“Bull!” shouted Duncan. “Tell us!”

“Why don’t we call the CEO down here and ask him?” someone said. This was followed by a chorus of shouts and applause.

“I don’t think Mr. Bachin will be very forthcoming,” Marc replied.

“I think Mr. Bachin will be very forthcoming,” I offered, “if you inform him that we stand between you and the door and no one’s going anywhere until we get some answers.”

The chorus was very loud this time. Orleans slammed the door shut. The plastic blinds against the door window rattled in their frame.

Marc’s eyes continued watching an invisible tennis game between us and the exit. Finally, he picked up the phone, punched an extension, and said a few words into it, sotto voce. He listened, nodded and then hung up.

“Mr. Bachin will meet with all of you in the conference room on Monday morning at 9 a.m.”

“And supposing we don’t show up to work next week?” Alan asked, smiling slightly.

Fact: The unemployment services were, like the rest of the federal government, severely understaffed, and those working there were making even less than we were. What was once a system that could provide you with a check–however meager–on a weekly basis had now disintegrated into a mess of red tape that produced payment roughly once a month. And rates weren’t what they once were. Payment was capped at $550 a week–a pittance in a land where gas was over $12 a gallon and a bottle of milk cost $5.50.

“Will we get our medical benefits extended?” someone asked.

The room shut up at this, everyone (myself included) eager to hear the answer.

Marc’s eyes shifted again. “I’ll have to look into that,” he said. “Mr. Bachin will probably be the one to answer that question.”

“Good work, Marc. Way to pass the buck.” I said it loud enough for him to hear, but he didn’t react.

About 20 of us followed Alan to his small home three miles from the factory; he had promised us we would like what we saw, something, in his words, we “just might need.”

Fact: Everyone in this town carpools. And no one travels much, not anymore. Gas, as I have said, is exceedingly expensive. Not that the mill ever had much use for trucks; most of our product is shipped out of town on trains, which as far as I know still run on a steady basis. But what little commuting we do to and from work, and the small amount of diesel fuel sucked up by passing trucks, kept the Exxon at the corner of town in (scant) business.

The sun was setting in the west by the time our small caravan of crowded cars reached Alan’s house. We all climbed out of my van gratefully, eager to stretch our limbs and escape the close confines of the carpool.

Alan’s house was small but functional. After his wife died, he took down most of the pictures they had taken together and replaced them with ancient Ansel Adams prints; replaced the flowers from the stand by the door with a jug to keep change in.

The living room was too small for us to congregate in, so Alan led us to the basement, which was the biggest room in the house. There were a few folding chairs and a musty old couch that didn’t look like it could take any pressure, but Duncan, who’s never been skinny to begin with, managed to squeeze in and make it work. Yellow sunset descended from windows high in the walls.

Once we were all situated, Alan went back upstairs, rummaged around for a while, and came back with a large black plastic box, a bag of plastic cups and a large bottle filled to the lip with amber fluid. Ears perked up; eyes brightened; mouths watered. It had been a long time since we had any liquor.

“What’s cooking?” someone asked.

“Single-malt. And there’s more where that came from.”

“Just might need” was right–no one even asked what brand. The cups were handed around in a hurry, and the line for fill-ups caused no small amount of minor shoving matches. Mine went down like a mouthful of razors, but warmed my belly and put a rosy shine on the light streaming in through the windows.

As the bottle was passed around for seconds, Alan cleared some space in a corner, dropped to a crouch, and opened up the black plastic box. Inside was another box of black plastic festooned with buttons and dials.

Someone whistled sarcastically. “Alan’s got a radio, people.”

“Bull! Radio’s been off the air for weeks.”

“The major stations, yes,” Alan said, plugging in the radio and turning it on. A small, high-pitched whine rose from his corner of the room, then petered out and was replaced by static. “People are still communicating with each other across the country on the short-wave bands.”

The room got quiet and necks craned closer to the sound as Alan began to dial through the channels. A small light next to the dial flickered on and off as it picked up signals, weak and mostly unformed.

Then suddenly–contact. The light remained steady as a low voice spoke.

“The Manhattan food riots have gone into their third day. Uncountable hundreds are dead and most of downtown below Canal Street is still on fire.”

“Oh my God,” someone said.

The radio continued, an end-of-the-world preacher who would not shut up. “Refugees continue to stream out of Chicago after last week’s nuclear explosion. No explanation of the explosion has been given by the authorities, and to the best of our knowledge, no one has taken responsibility.”

Alan shut the radio off. The crowd hollered.

“No, no, no,” Alan said, waving his hands in commiseration. “It’s just more of the same.”

“Then why did you play that little bit for us?” I asked, suddenly angry with a good friend of mine.

“To jog your thoughts. To make you think. Do any of you have any idea how lucky we are, living in rural Pennsylvania? Do you?”

No one spoke. Alan, undeterred, continued.

“We buy from farm stands that grow their own crops. Our kids have a school right in the middle of town–no commuting. And until now, we were getting the money to keep an economy going.”

“It can’t really be that bad … can it?” someone asked.

“When was the last time you saw an airplane in the sky, Rodgers?” Alan asked.

Quiet blanketed the room. He was right. We hadn’t seen anything pass by in the sky in the last few weeks.

“Now, you’re all free to sit here and get drunk with me,” Alan said. “But for those of you with families, I suggest you go to them. Hold them. And count your blessings.”

“Who’s going to tell the other shifts about this?” I asked.

Alan shrugged. “They’ll find out everything we know on Monday. I have a feeling each of the shift supervisors is going to break down and allow them to come to the meeting. Especially now that such a meeting’s been organized. Thanks for that, Cole.”

I nodded. The meeting broke up after that, and the few of us still sober chauffeured our comrades home.

“Where have you been?” Jula asked me casually as I came in through the door. She was knitting a new sweater for our son, Kyle, whose asthmatic rasp I could hear through the open door to his room.

Fact: Asthma cases are way up. The pollution in the air before and during the Depression reached something my father used to refer to as a “tipping point”–on one side of one infinitesimal degree of pollution in the air, nobody got sick, and on the other side, my son Kyle can’t–and probably never will–breathe normally.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sat down next to her, staring at the floor. How could I tell her we were out of work?

“I, uh … we, we got laid off today.”

“Laid off?” She put aside the knitting and sat up. “What do you mean, laid off?”

“The whole shift … ” I added. I felt helpless.

“How did you find out?”

I gave her an abbreviated version of the story, leaving out the things we heard on Alan’s radio. I didn’t want to alarm her even further.

We were quiet for a while, the silence punctuated only by the ticking of the clock and the rhythmic sounds of Kyle’s breath, slicing through the air like a hot knife through butter.

Finally, Jula placed a hand on her belly and spoke.

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, although I sounded unconvincing to myself. “I’ll find another job. Something will open up. Maybe the plant will re-open in a few weeks.”

Jula just stared at me. Then she stared at her hand. Then she stared at me again.

Oh, no …

“How long?” I asked.

“Three and a half months. I found out today.”

Honey, that’s wonderful. Honey, I welcome this new life into our family. Honey, your timing couldn’t have been worse.

I stood up and paced a bit, scratching at my scalp like I do when I’m nervous. Finally, I gave her a weak little bit of, “Honey, I don’t know what to say … congratulations … “

“Looks like I’m going to have to get a job while you stay home and care for Kyle,” Jula said.

“That’s crap. No pregnant wife of mine is going to have to work.”

“Then what do you propose we do?”

I stared up at the ceiling. It was webbed with cracks we didn’t have the money or the resources to fix.

“I’ll think of something,” I said, and went into the bedroom to get undressed.

Fact: The Chinese used to place a lot of curses on each other, but one of them–may you live in interesting times–was and is a doozy. Look at my interesting times. Look at what the world has brought upon itself. Burning cities. Infrastructures toppling. A new Dark Age.

I didn’t get any sleep that night, nor did Jula. I knew she wasn’t angry at me, but angry at the whole situation. Angry at the lack of options. This Depression we’re in … it’s like being sealed in a room with no doors. How do you get out of a room with no doors? And how the hell did you get in there in the first place?

Part 3: The Facts of Life and Death

The meeting was scheduled for 9 a.m., but everyone short of the CEO had arrived by 8:30. No one wanted to miss this. The parking lot had more cars in it than I could ever remember; even the back row was almost filled to capacity. True to Alan’s words, the other shifts had gotten wind of what was going on, and I saw many cars I did not recognize.

Everyone had gathered in the lobby of the office portion of the factory: I spotted Alan, Orleans, even that crazy Collins. There was a low murmur of conversation in the air, but because it was all pointless speculation, I declined to be a part of it, at least until Alan came along and nudged me.

“You ready for this?”

I shrugged. “I just wish the bid to unionize had worked. This wouldn’t be happening if we had unionized.”

Fact: Five years ago, a troublemaker named Rebus had tried to get us to form a union. A few people signed on with him and they began the process of taking down names. Nearly everyone declined, because they knew how the process would end: with Rebus getting fired. And damn it if he didn’t. Although he hadn’t technically done anything wrong, they found a way to get rid of him, and fast. Ever since Rebus, no one has brought up the prospect of unionizing.

Alan shrugged. “Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. You know if we had a union, they’d probably be powerless to prevent this.”

“Yeah, but, like, a package, maybe? Some kind of reward for our years of hard work, something to help us through–”

The doors to the conference room swung open, interrupting me. Like a tidal wave, the people in the lobby pressed inside, the first lucky few sitting themselves at the massive oak table, the rest pressed against the wall. Having never been in the conference room, I had no idea how big it was, or what its official capacity was. We were certainly violating that last figure today, but somehow, everyone on every shift found room before the doors slammed shut.

From a small door at the far end of the room stepped out Marc, the two other shift managers and the CEO. We’d all seen Mr. Sydney Bachin’s face before, of course; he used to be on the news frequently, presiding over this town like its lord and mayor at ribbon-cutting festivals and the like. And we’d occasionally spot him on the floor of the factory, giving a tour to someone he wished to impress.

But none of us had seen him up close, and now we had our chance. Bachin was a tall man, fit for his late middle age with a set jaw and a look in his eyes that spoke of imperiousness, of kingliness. His blue eyes sparkled with what I first took for glee, but later discovered was abject rage.

“I’d say you may be seated, but it seems like you have already taken the opportunity,” he began.

I glanced over at Alan. His face was impassive. I glanced over at Orleans. He was barely keeping his temper in check. I glanced over at Collins. His face was as calm and pure as a spring morning.

“When I am done speaking, you may ask me all the questions you wish,” Bachin continued. “But before that happens, I have a little speech of my own to give.

“A lot of people have blamed a lot of things on the state of the world today. Inflation, a collapsing housing market, the nuclear exchange in Chechnya, debt spiraling out of control … no one really knows why this Second Great Depression has happened. Nor will they, until the crisis is over and people can get funding to study such things.

“About a month ago, the trains that collect our loads of product stopped coming. I didn’t want a panic on my hands, so we’ve been dumping boxes–and boxes, and boxes–of toilet paper in the woods north of town. No explanation for the train’s disappearance, of course. I can’t say it came as a surprise.

“Due to our lack of income, and our inability to pay the bank that funds us, the bank has decided to foreclose on this factory. But I can tell you one thing: They won’t have my factory. They won’t have my plant. And they won’t have my workers.”

The mood in the room rolled over. People began to look at each other with an expression of hope. Maybe Bachin had found a way to preserve our jobs?

Bachin placed a matte black briefcase on the desk and undid the latches, but did not open it. He drummed his fingers on top of it for a few seconds, looking down at the table. Then he lifted his head and spoke.

“They won’t have my plant because I’ve rigged this factory with enough explosives to level a small city. They won’t have my workers because, well, you’re all locked in with the explosives.”

Silence. Was he joking? The look in his eyes said no.

Orleans stepped forward. “You’d best be kidding, man,” he said.

Bachin shook his head. “Oh, no. No joke. The mills are crawling with detonators. I’ve got some seriously state-of-the-art equipment out there.”

Marc had joined the ranks of his former enemies, an appalled look on his features. “But … why?” he choked out.

“Because no one takes what is Sydney Bachin’s. Nobody.”

“I’ll take care of this little … ” Orleans said, and began walking directly toward Bachin. The CEO flipped open the briefcase with a flick of the wrist and used his other hand to withdraw a gun.

“I wouldn’t, my friend,” Bachin said, almost kindly, and pointed the gun at Orleans, who immediately took two steps backward and raised his hands.

Bachin smiled sadly. “My father killed himself, and his father before him. Poor folk, they were, never able to make ends meet. I thought happiness could be bought … but what can be bought can always be taken away.”

He raised the gun to his head. Someone screamed, “Don’t!” From my vantage point at the back of the room, all I heard was the report and all I saw was a spray of red splatter against the wall. A few men up front screamed in horror as they were coated in their CEO’s blood; everyone groaned. Bachin’s body slumped to the floor.

“Do you think he was serious about blowing up the plant?” I asked Alan.

“Yes. We need to get out of here–quickly.”

But everyone seemed frozen, stuck in time. They just watched a man blow his brains out. The building was (supposedly) riddled with explosives. It took a moment to process.

It was Alan who came around the fastest. “All right, everyone, let’s take it slow and easy. Out the conference room doors, down the steps, and out the building–one by one, in an orderly–”

They bolted. People collided with one another at the doorway, pushing and shoving like pigs at a trough. As I left, I passed Marc, who stood near the front of the room, his face and upper body dripping with the blood of his boss. His mouth worked, though he made no sound. Let him gawk. I had places to go.

The main door to the factory was a huge steel thing with a doorknob lock. A crowd had gathered there by the time I reached it.

“Broke the key off in the lock,” someone said, and he was right–I could see the little sliver of metal jutting out of the keyhole, its jagged edge gleaming in the fluorescents of the lobby.

“The back! The loading bays!”

The crowd turned, en masse, and found that the door linking the lobby to the long ramp that led up into the factory was also locked. A small, balding man jiggled the handle helplessly, a look of desperation on his face.

Thankfully, this door was not made of plate metal, and had a large pane of glass in it. I was just thinking of smashing it when Orleans pushed through the crowd with the pistol Bachin had used to take his life.

“Are you sure you want your prints on that thing?” I asked him.

“Are you sure you want to burn to death in a toilet paper factory?” was his rejoinder.

Using the butt of the pistol, Orleans smashed the glass. Jagged panes stuck out from the frame, and a few men set up about plucking them out.

“What’s going on up there? Help us!”

“Does anyone have a cellphone?”

Fact: I would have laughed if I wasn’t so nervous. Cellular communication was impossible because the cellphone companies were out of business. Regular land lines were hard to come by these days, let alone portable cellular technology. And who could we call? The town sheriff? Did 911 even work anymore?

The glass cleared, Orleans had left an opening in the door about three feet wide by four feet high: just enough to climb through. Only what people started doing wasn’t climbing through; they more or less slithered through in their rush to get to the back of the factory.

Alan and I, the Good Samaritans, stood on either side of the door, linking our palms so people could step up, seize the opening, and stumble over to the other side. Once half of the staff was through, we heard a commotion from the inside of the factory.

I looked up at Alan. “Go,” he said, and I went.

The factory’s lights hurt my eyes after the relative dimness of the lobby. People were milling about aimlessly, some crying, some pulling at their hair in frustration. I pushed through the throng and went to the loading bay.

“Look! Look!” someone was shouting, pointing at the controls that opened and closed the massive doors. They had been smashed to pieces, leaving a gaping hole, multicolored wires jutting out obscenely.

I tried to keep calm. I didn’t want to die. But I knew if I succumbed to the panic that gripped these men, we would all die.

Someone nudged me and pointed at one of the mills. Strapped to it was a large box painted in orange and black stripes. On top of the box was a timer. It read 13:11, and it was counting downward.

I set my watch to match the countdown, my hands fumbling with the controls. By the time I had everything synched up, the timer read 12:45.

Collins pushed past me, grabbed a large box of outgoing toilet paper, and stepped up on it to get a better look at the detonator. I dimly remembered someone telling me Collins had been in the Army years ago–could he disarm the thing?

No harm in asking. I shouted up to him.

Collins shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I thought you were in the Army!” I shouted.

“Infantry,” he muttered as he climbed down. “All I can tell you is that it looks pretty real to me.”

I glanced at my watch. It now read 11:07. We had wasted over a minute and a half.

Now that I was looking, I spotted detonators everywhere: on the paper mills, on the cotton silos, on the computer equipment, on the huge boiler in the corner. Where had Bachin gotten all this stuff? He couldn’t keep the factory open, but he could afford tons and tons of demolition equipment?

I told Alan about this incongruity.

He shrugged. “Probably blew the last of his load on surplus military goods. They’re not hard to come by these days. But the question is moot–what’s important is that.”

He pointed up to a window set high on the far wall. The factory’s ceiling was about 30 feet from the ground; the window was maybe 25 feet from the floor. It was a big window, and easily breakable. But how to get everyone up there? And how to get them safely back down?

I looked at my wrist again. 9:09.

“Alright, everybody!” I shouted. “Listen up!”

Nobody heard a word I said. Thankfully, Orleans understood that I was trying to take control of the situation, and he handed me the gun. I fired a round into the air.

Everyone froze in a crouch.

“I want a pyramid of outgoing crates of toilet paper stacked under that window, like steps! Everyone now! Gather anything you can find–crates, pieces of machinery, whatever. Just make sure it’s stable!”

The blinking masses looked upward at the sun shining through the window above them. Inside was panic, disorder; outside was peace, the warm summer breeze.

But damned if they didn’t get to it. I’ve never seen anyone on any crew work so hard. Six packed cardboard boxes were piled under the window in less than a minute, and the sweating, panicky men continued to load other items on, building a stairway that could lead them to salvation.

6:03. This was going to be close. And I still hadn’t solved the problem of how to get them down, out of the window, onto the tarmac far below. I knew from experience that the parking lot was on that side.

And then Collins was there. “Give me the gun,” he said to me.

I hesitated for a moment. Collins made a face.

“I was honorably discharged, schmuck-face. Just give me the gun.”

I handed it over. He turned and began bounding up the steps to the big window. The steps weren’t being built fast enough; he ended up with his head about five feet below the window before raising the gun and emptying its chamber into the glass window.

The first bullet put a starburst pattern in the glass; the second another; the third shattered it entirely. For a brief moment, it rained shards of broken glass, and Collins ducked his head reflexively, covering his eyes with his arm.

“Here! Here!” someone shouted from below. The man reached up with a stepladder, which Collins quickly unfolded and laid out beneath the window. He strode up its limited length, placing his hands on the sill and peering out.

“Ah, we’re doomed,” he said bitterly.

3:59.

“Doesn’t anyone around here have a ladder?” Collins asked. “These mills are enormous. Someone has to have a ladder somewhere!”

The crowd scattered in search of one. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

With a clatter, a crowd of men emerged with a long steel ladder. Men standing on the makeshift pyramid of boxes began to haul the ladder up toward the window, and Collins oversaw the process of snaking it through the broken glass and down to the ground below.

I watched in something like horror as the ladder’s lowest rung dangled fifteen feet off the ground. It wasn’t long enough.

2:11.

“Don’t tell them,” I whispered to Collins. “They’ll make the jump when they reach the bottom of the ladder, they have to, but don’t tell them. They’ll freeze up.”

Collins nodded.

He and I gripped the sides of the ladder and hooked it on to the window opening. The men, realizing escape and certain death were both near, began streaming up the pyramid like lemmings. The first of them, the small bald man from earlier, swung one leg over the side and hurried down the ladder as far as he could go. Collins and I watched his receding pate, gleaming in the summer morning.

“Uh-oh,” we heard him say. Rather than provide encouragement, Collins sent another two men down. The shaking of the ladder knocked the bald man loose, and he landed on the pavement with a sound like steak slapping on a cutting board.

“Owww!” he shouted, clutching at his ankle. But he somehow found the strength to begin putting distance between himself and the plant.

1:34. It was going to be close.

Next up was a guy named Fabian. “Why did he yell?” Fabian asked.

“There’s a drop between the ladder and the ground. Just go!”

Fabian nodded and slid down the ladder, landing with far more grace than his predecessor. The other two men Collins had sent down had handled the drop ably as well. Something like hope began to form in my chest, so I looked at my watch again to dispel it. This was not a time for hope.

0:59.

Fact: There are 60 seconds in a minute. It takes a good 20 seconds to climb the ladder of boxes, even with people pushing you from behind and pulling you from in front. Another 10 seconds in front of the ladder–you don’t want to break it off the window and be responsible for dozens of deaths. Maybe 10 seconds to slide down. Leaving you with 20 seconds to get away from the plant.

It felt like an eternity, but only seconds passed as all of the men climbed down the ladder, some breaking ankles–I think someone broke an arm, too–some landing with perfect precision. I was too busy assisting to notice my watch turn quietly to 00:00.

The only bomb I could see from this vantage point went off with a loud shattering sound, and the mill it was attached to immediately caught fire. A flaming pillar rose from the center of the room, and the fire began to lick the ceiling tentatively, as if it liked what it tasted. Other bombs began to explode around the room, and one of the great cylindrical paper mills blew up near its base. With the sound of a coffin creaking shut, it tilted over and slammed its burning face into the bottom of the pyramid stairs we had made, which–being made of toilet paper and cardboard boxes–ignited immediately.

Collins and I looked at each other. We had a few people left who hadn’t escaped, and one who refused outright. We pushed him shouting and protesting toward the opening, turned him around, and damn if we didn’t force him down the ladder with our arms.

And then it was just Collins and me. There was fire everywhere. The stink was enormous. Clouds of smoke obscured the ceiling, and a huge blast of heat struck us as a cotton silo in the far corner ignited with a great woosh.

I looked down the ladder and felt an enormous sense of vertigo. There were dozens of men outside, licking their wounds and calling to me enthusiastically.

I backed off. “You first,” I said to Collins. I didn’t know if I could do it or not.

Collins shook his head emphatically.

“Going down with the ship?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard above the hellish din behind us.

“No! I’m just scared of heights!”

Laughing, I clambered over the side and slid down the ladder as fast as I could go. Steel rivets, placed every few feet to correspond with the rungs of the ladder, bit into my hands and drew blood. Collins’ face got smaller and smaller. And suddenly there was empty space beneath my feet, and two men grabbed me and dragged me away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked the two men at the ladder. I was not shocked to discover they were Alan and Orleans.

“You saved our lives, we save yours,” Orleans said simply.

And then a pair of leather work boots slammed into my head as Collins landed. He clapped me on the back, wobbled upright, and then we ran as fast as our feet could take us–across the loading bay, over the hill and into the sparse forest that runs between the plant and the highway.

Something thudded behind me–the sound of God walking–and there was a flash of light. I turned, shielding my eyes with my hands.

The plant’s outlines were obscured behind walls of fire. Black smoke rose from the massive torch and was already obscuring most of the visible sky, turning beautiful morning sunlight to polluted twilight.

“That’s gonna smell to heaven when they put her out,” Orleans said. He was laughing. We were all laughing. And although I was jobless, and the country was rotting on the dollar it was founded on and I had no way of taking care of my pregnant wife or sick son, I knew, somehow, everything would be all right.

Pieces of paper descended from the sky, burning correspondence and invoices and flaming meteors of toilet paper ejected from the site of the plant during the large explosion. One of them, flaming bright orange, passed across my field of vision, and it read:

REPORT TO YOUR

SHIFT SUPERVISOR

AT THE END OF YOUR

Lowell Yaeger lives in Queens, which may sound very cool to people in the sticks, but is really not. This story is dedicated to his mom and dad.